I brought in some ideas for statistics projects that Taylor could choose from in order to make the course more meaningful for her. We looked at some of the online statistics concerning crime in her neighborhood. We visited one site where she investigated local crimes in her city, Jupiter. I then told her to choose from a list of possible variables on which to find statistics. She was interested in dates of birth (month and days only) on which she gathered data. I also introduced her to the random number generator in the calculator. There was no assignment.

The plan was to discuss possibilities for a student project for Taylor to reinforce what she learns in class. I had planned to use some downloaded ideas to give to her to give her a range of possible projects. Since Taylor was not in attendance, I will postpone that lesson until our next class. There was no assignment.

I guided Taylor through the use of graphing calculators to find the mean, standard deviation, median, first quartile, third quartile, minimum and maximum values of data sets. We discussed which measures to use in order to analyze different data sets. We worked through the end of the chapter quiz and several application problems. There was no assignment.

I worked with Taylor to show her how the first and third quartiles are calculated after the median of the data is known. We then looked at how box plots visually display the five number summary including the minimum, the first and third quartiles, the median, and the maximum. Following an example of the development of a box plot display, we began exploring deviations from the mean, variances, and standard deviations. We also discussed whether measures were resistant to changes in value depending on the values of outliers. There was no assignment.

Taylor and I visited the website for SMU which she has visited as a prospective college. She found some statistics of interest to her. We then explored stem plots which Taylor was familiar with, and we discussed lurking variables and histograms vs bar graphs and pie charts. At the end of the session, we did some practice problems. There was no assignment.

I gave Taylor three groups of data and told her to calculate the mean and median for each group. The data groups had been constructed to contain one group where the mean and median were close in value, a second group where the mean was much higher than the median, and a third group where the mean was much lower than the median. I showed her how the groups' differences could be explained by the presence of outliers in the second and third groups.
After a discussion on median, mean, and outliers, I asked Taylor to visit the U.S. Census website and look up various tables and charts including doctors per 10,000 individuals, damage done by hurricanes per state, and alligator attacks over time in Florida. I told her that making judgements based on a single variable is usually a mistake. There was no assignment.

I talked with Taylor about the uses of statistics and about the requirements and uses of statistics in psychology. I then told her to use the excel program to display data in different forms such as bar charts and pie charts. We then visited the U.S. Census website and explored the variables presented there. There was no assignment.

When we started the lesson, I asked Taylor why she chose to take pre-calculus instead of AP Statistics. She replied that her advisor had recommended it but we talked further and decided that she would be pursuing the wrong path since she wants to major in psychology. We looked at some other courses she could take and decided that the most suitable course for her to take this year would be Honors Statistics.
We then began an introduction to statistics and I told her about various uses of statistics including manufacturing quality control, polling, and psychology. We talked about the use of surveys and their construction. I also briefly showed her the way to construct a histogram and told her about aggregated and disaggregated data groups. There was no homework assignment.

Marcos took a final exam covering a variety of questions from throughout the course. He did an excellent job on it.

We looked at the probability of people having IQs in different ranges. Every normal distribution can be transformed into a standard normal distribution with a standard deviation of 1. A standard normal distribution table, or z-table, can be used to determine probability. The z-table gives us the area/probability to the LEFT of z. Marcos learned to convert the value from a normal distribution to the corresponding z-score.